Merits and Pitfalls of Town and Country

            In their hit single “Baby Girl,” country music duo Sugarland sings, “They say, in this town / The stars stay up all night / Well, I don’t know / Can’t see ‘em / For the glow of the neon lights” (Sugarland). This lyric portrays the dichotomy between life in the city and life in the country as a black and white issue: the city is a place for fame and development while the country is associated with nature and a more peaceful feel. However, the relationship between these two archetypal locations is not nearly so simple, as much of the literature we have read this semester demonstrates. In her post entitled “Music! And the ending. Oh my!” Carol C. says that Sense and Sensibility in particular is “all about dualities,” and I would argue that this is also an apt description of the city versus country split. In his essay “A Brief History of London,” David Cody quotes Hippolyte Taine, a French critic and historian, as saying, “Nothing here [in London] is natural: everything is transformed, violently changed, from the earth and man himself, to the very light and air. But the hugeness of this accumulation of man-made things takes off the attention from this deformity and this artifice; in default of a wholesome and noble beauty, there is life, teeming and grandiose” (Cody). While there is a clear distinction between the physical spaces of the city and the country where the former is manmade and populated while the latter is natural and simpler, their value and the feelings they elicit are much more ambiguous. Both fault and virtue can be found in each location, depending on one’s particular outlook. Novels like The Romance of the Forest, Adeline Mowbray, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park all work with urban and rural settings, but they convey different messages about the benefits and restrictions that each bestows. These texts use the tension between the city and the country to speak to more conceptual ideas regarding social pressures and aspirations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

            The Gothic novel The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe places heavy emphasis on the physical landscape that surrounds her characters, which signals and draws out both physical and moral threats to her characters. These threats can come about through interactions among characters, or within a single character’s own sense of morality. Chris Drummond explains that “Radcliffe bombards the reader with rich and detailed descriptions of the environment, allowing her characters to become secondary to the world around them.” She offers larger than life descriptions of the rocks, trees, and rivers that populate the countryside, and the fact that we follow Adeline along on so many journeys emphasizes Radcliffe’s intention of making the natural world a focal point of her prose. As Adeline has abundant chances to observe nature through her travels, the reader is able to observe Radcliffe’s portrayal of nature thoroughly.

            During our class discussion of the Gothic novel on February 21, we found out that this genre typically uses nature, especially forests, to signify emptiness and solitude, which makes sense because these spaces are generally unpopulated (as opposed to the crowded metropolis). Volumes I and II of The Romance of the Forest often represent nature that way. The forest is a place that can separate people from the rest of the world in a dangerous manner. We see this at the very beginning of the novel during the la Mottes’ flight from Paris when Pierre, stumbling along a dark path, ends up threateningly locked in a room in a stranger’s house, and later when the family finds the abbey, the source of the conflict that eventually throws Adeline’s life into peril. Though the abbey is a building, a manmade edifice, it is buried deep within the forest, which lends it an ominous character. It is as if nature has reclaimed this space, once inhabited by man, by breaking parts of it down and populating it with wildlife. Again, the forest is dark and ominous, and at first sight of the abbey the reader is put on edge; we know nothing good will happen here.

            At the same time, though, there are moments of enchantment with the beauty of nature, like when Clara is so inspired by the sylvan scene around her that she simply must play her lute. True, this instance paints nature as far less threatening than the previous examples. However, bad things still happen here. Clara gets so wrapped up in the sights of the evening that she breaks her promise not to play her lute. While the dark forests of Volumes I and II lead to physical danger, this bright natural scene in Volume III breeds moral danger. Typical of the Gothic genre, the natural world of the countryside in The Romance of the Forest serves as a signal, and sometimes even a catalyst, of conflict and destruction.

            While Radcliffe’s novel highlights social and moral issues through nature, Adeline Mowbray by Amelia Opie uses an urban setting to communicate the restrictions society can place on its individual members. This novel is more explicitly focused on themes like education and relationships within families than on any particular setting, so its characters and their interactions come before its treatment of the city itself. However, the fact that the novel takes place in an urban setting instead of in the country is an important component of the social agenda it so forcefully describes. Martha Musgrove cites a “genre of domestic-didactic fiction…in which the country is conceived as ‘rural, not urban; agrarian, not industrial,’” explaining that Opie’s decision to situate Adeline on the urban side of this contrast is a notable one (219-220). Again, city and country are clearly different, and a character’s placement impacts on her experiences.

            In her post “No where to turn,” Jane claims that this book addresses “the boundaries of the oppressive and restricting society women were forced to live in. Adeline suffers because she strays from social expectations and tradition.” Similarly, G writes that Opie shows a woman, who in an attempt to retain her individual agency and independence rejects the institution of marriage and chooses to live her romantic life beyond social constructs. [But] society fought back tenfold.” In this urban setting, social expectations are strictly enforced. Adeline is ridiculed and rejected for her decision to live with Glenmurray without marrying him first. The hard textures, rigid lines, and intentional composition of the city is mirrored in the strictness with which Adeline’s family and friends, and even strangers, judge her choices to step outside of the equally rigid social boundaries that exist there. The following 1885 painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, entitled “Blackman Street, London,” strikes me as an appropriate depiction of this imagery:

 

The tall triangular steeple toward the middle of the painting immediately draws the eye to the architecture which, of course, is manmade. In fact, nature is totally closed out of this painting as buildings encircle the entire scene. The steeple’s only real competition for attention is the yellow light, which contrasts so sharply with the rest of the grey coloring, which is cast from the street lamp in the lower left corner. Although slightly more inviting than the rest of the scene, even this light is encased in hard glass atop a very straight black pole. The people in the painting are shrouded in shadows; none of them stand out, and the audience does not know anyone’s identity. Adeline’s contemporaries would likely love this depiction, where everyone is in their place and no one is making him- or herself conspicuous.

            In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, on the other hand, distinctive personalities do arise without getting ostracized by society. Elinor, for example, represents sense in the novel: she is cautious and prudent, and aware of other people and their perceptions. Marianne, on the other hand, stands for sensibility: she is driven by her emotions and she is not afraid of expressing them out loud. She demonstrates romantic tendencies, particularly in her reactions to nature. As Rosemarie Bodenheimer notes, “Marianne tries to mold life into the stuff of sentimental fiction” (608). When her family leaves Norland she laments parting with the trees there. Later, when she and Edmund discuss landscape scenery, he expresses his preference for neat houses and straight trees instead of the more wild, less constrained scenes that Marianne enjoys. In her post “Sesnse (neo-classicism) and Sensibility (romanticism),” CBennett comments that “Marianne is all about excess and beauty, appreciating love and the natural world (romanticism). She loves or hates passionately and she finds her emotions easy to access.” By aligning Marianne with the natural world, Austen also links freedom and spontaneity (qualities which characterize the younger sister) with the country. Nature, found in the country, offers a sense of liberation that is denied in the city. Lady Middleton affirms this idea through her anxiety over hosting an impromptu dance: while it is “allowable” in the country, “in London, where the reputation of elegance was more important, and less easily obtained, it was risking too much” to give a “small dance” (Austen, 194). The city, or perhaps more accurately, the people in it, impose social restrictions from which characters can escape in the country as they opt instead to follow Marianne’s lead and behave in a way that brings them happiness.

            I think the following landscape painting, done in 1828 by John Constable and titled “Hampstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond.,” fits well with the ideas about the countryside presented in Sense and Sensibility:

 

A detail worthy of note: it was actually quite difficult to find a landscape painting without any people in it; this one, for example, includes people and their horses in both and foreground and back by the pond. This is important because it shows that it was not necessarily nature in and of itself that was valuable to people at the time, but their interactions with it. Even in that early scene where the Dashwoods are leaving Norland, Marianne speaks to the trees, not just about them. She is interacting with nature, just like the people in the painting. Unlike “Blackman Street, London,” which drew the eye to the architectural results of man’s work, “Hampstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond” draws the eye to the hill covered in vegetation on the right-hand side as it is bathed in light (notice, though, that there is also a building in the background. These novels do not necessarily deal with utter wilderness, but with the countryside that is just outside the bounds of the city). The huge, dark clouds in the upper left corner and the patches of blue sky poking through are also prominent parts of the painting, while the people are dwarfed and relegated to a secondary role. The painting is light and open, which suggests a feeling of freedom. There are no restraints around the man on horseback by the pond, for example. The characters in Sense and Sensibility also find liberation in the countryside, but like the people here, they are never far from the city and the limits that it imposes if one wishes to keep up her respectable reputation.

            Austen’s novel Mansfield Park also addresses the city versus country dichotomy, but in a way that more directly relates to relationships among people. Bodenheimer poetically states that this book portrays a “circular romantic relationship of nature and self: going out to the landscape, the self is reassured of its own virtue, and of its faith in the process of living” (623). From this viewpoint, the countryside is a place for the individual, as opposed to the bustling streets and myriad distractions of the city. Edmund supports this notion when he discusses the clergy’s role with Mary Crawford. Mary criticizes members of the clergy for having no real effects on their congregations and the population at large, preaching a few times a week but otherwise remaining unseen. Edmund gently explains that, though this might be true in immoral, overly crowded London, a clergyman actually has great power to influence his congregation in the country because they actually know and interact with him. The population here is smaller, so it is possible to form actual relationships with people and therefore to have a significant impact on their beliefs and the way they behave. While the city often causes people to get lost in the crowd, the country gives them an opportunity to remain individuals, and it fosters an environment of moral education and growth.

            This scene puts the city versus country split into a moral dimension, where the city is a place for vice and transgressions while the country is more pure. Interestingly, the most dramatic moral transgression in the novel, Maria and Henry’s decision to run off and live, occurs in London. It is true that the characters in the book engaged in morally questionable behavior with their attempted presentation of Lovers’ Vows at Mansfield Park, so the country is not always nor totally good. However, that play was, in the end, acting. It was influenced by the characters’ real feelings and personal agendas, but it was ultimately a fiction. Maria and Henry’s controversial behavior toward the end of the novel, though, is real, and it has real consequences: Edmund realizes he will never be able to engage in a relationship with Mary, and eventually he and Fanny join in marriage. Maria and Henry cross the line into immorality when they act on their desires, and they only do so once they are away from Mansfield Park, in London, in the city. Though the distinction between good in the country and evil in the city is not black and white or clear cut, it is certainly there in this novel as well as the others I have discussed. The contrast between the two locations demands attention through its ability to move plot and impact characters. Sugarland may not be able to see the stars, but if their city is anything like the ones in these texts, those neon lights might have messages of their own to convey.

  

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. Print.

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. “Looking at the Landscape in Jane Austen.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 21.4 (1981): 605-623. Web. 26 April 2012.

Cody, David. “A Brief History of London.” http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist4.html. Web. 26 April 2012.

Constable, John. “Hampstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond.” 1828. Oil on canvas. Constable, Turner & The Exhibition Landscape. Victoria & Albert Museum. Web. 26 April 2012.

Drummond, Chris. “Techniques of Austen and Radcliffe.” The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/austen/descr1.html. Web. 26 April 2012.

Grimshaw, John Atkinson. “Blackman Street, London.” 1885. Oil on canvas. John Atkins Grimshaw: The Complete Works. www.johnatkinsongrimshaw.org. 2002-2012. Web. 27 April 2012.

Musgrove, Martha. “Relocating Femininity: Women and the City in Mary Brunton’s Fiction.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 20.2 (2008): 219-244. Web. 26 April 2012.

Sugarland. “Baby Girl.” Twice the Speed of Life. CD. Mercury Nashville. 2004. Web. 26 April 2012. http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/sugarland/baby-girl-14081.html.